Melat Kiros — who’s also a lawyer and a Ph.D student when she isn’t behind the counter at the Whittier Cafe — is picking up momentum in her first-ever political campaign. She’s running against longtime U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette in the Democratic primary for Colorado’s 1st Congressional District in Denver.

DeGette, who was sworn into office the year Kiros was born, has .

But Kiros, a Democratic socialist, rose to prominence after she demolished DeGette in the Democrats’ Denver County assembly last month. And while political observers, including Kiros herself, say the assembly process isn’t actually representative of who will vote in the June primary, the win still marked a surprising development in a race that many considered to be predetermined.

“This has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the fact that Denver Democrats want a fighter — somebody who is actually committed to transformative change,” Kiros said in an interview this week with The Denver Post.

Kiros didn’t keep DeGette off the ballot, but she gave her a scare. Kiros won 646 votes, or the support of 63% of those present at the county assembly. DeGette won 336, or 32% of the votes.

It was the first time DeGette had lost a county assembly vote since she initially won her seat in Congress in the 1996 election.

Two weeks after the county assembly, DeGette, 68, narrowly won her place on the primary ballot at the 1st Congressional District party assembly, receiving 33% support — just above the 30% threshold to make the ballot. A third primary candidate, University of Colorado Regent Wanda James, , but her voter signatures are still under review by the state.

Denver-based state Rep. Javier Mabrey, who endorsed Kiros, said he saw her as part of a larger movement within the Democratic Party: voters who don’t want to see the same types of candidates elected.

Like New York City’s new Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Kiros is a more progressive Democrat than those who currently make up the majority of the party’s members in Congress, he said.

“I think there’s an energy for politics that says, ‘Our problems are more complicated than Donald Trump alone. We’ve got to confront the conditions that led to Donald Trump,” Mabrey said of the Republican president. “I think Melat has tapped into that.”

Kiros will still have a long way to go if she hopes to pull off a win of the June 30 primary, however. The assembly gathered only a tiny sliver of the 416,000 people eligible to vote in the June Democratic primary — 230,000 unaffiliated voters and 186,000 registered Democrats, as of March 1, according to the secretary of state’s office.

A spokesperson for DeGette’s campaign said the congresswoman was proud to have made the ballot through the assembly process.

“This is ultimately only a small first step with a small group of people,” Jennie Peek-Dunstone wrote in an email. “Now, we are talking with hundreds of thousands of Democrats and unaffiliated voters across the District. Diana has deep support across Denver because she’s always fought for us. She’ll keep championing our progressive values by standing up to Trump, fighting for universal health care, and defending our democracy — just as she always has.”

Denver is a Democratic stronghold, meaning that whoever wins the primary is all but guaranteed to win the general election. In 2024, DeGette defeated her Republican challenger with 77% of the vote.

Kiros’ background

A child of immigrants, Kiros was born in Ethiopia but moved to Denver with her family as a baby. She left the city to attend Washington College in Maryland and went on to attend law school at the University of Notre Dame. After passing the bar exam, she began work as a securities regulation attorney at , one of the biggest law firms in the country.

Kiros said that two years in, firm leaders fired her for a by Hamas in Israel, which responded by launching a war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. In the post, she questioned Israel’s legitimacy as a state and disavowed about the rise in antisemitism.

“This letter rightfully rebukes the anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and bigotry of all kinds that has spiked in recent weeks, but then goes on (to my confusion) to cite ‘calls for the elimination of the Israeli state’ as anti-Semitism,” she wrote. “… To conflate such bigotry with the geo-political question of Israel’s legitimacy is one of the greatest travesties in this conflict.”

More recently, Kiros has been criticized for sharing last month with a video that said Democrats “fellate Israel” and “suck (expletive).” The video was promoting an online rally for progressive candidates and speakers.

Kiros said she didn’t write that phrasing and doesn’t endorse that language.

After her firing from the law firm, Kiros says she decided to get more involved in politics. Now, she’s pursuing a doctorate in public policy with a focus on “democracy reform” at .

In 2024, she volunteered as the communications director for Democrat John Padora’s campaign in Colorado’s 4th Congressional District — one of the most conservative seats in the state and now represented by U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert.

‘Our party isn’t fighting back’

Kiros’ online ads , calling out not only DeGette but also former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. One shows large Xs over photos of former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and former President Joe Biden while Kiros says: “We hear politicians say over and over that we need bold leadership, progress and change. We’ve heard this for years. Decades. But they never deliver.”

“Our party isn’t fighting back like they should,” she goes on to say.

Kiros is endorsed by the Denver chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and the Justice Democrats. She says that if elected, she sees herself aligning with members of Congress like U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Summer Lee of Pennsylvania and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

She would use her position, she said, to “call out the Democrats who are not actually fighting for our values” and pressure them to change the votes she disagrees with. That could include civil protests and threatening quorum.

Her top three policy priorities would be passing “Medicare for All” and universal child care and creating a publicly financed election system similar to the one that Denver uses in city elections, which includes public matching for smaller-dollar donations.

DeGette supporters emphasize that the congresswoman is also a co-sponsor of Medicare for All legislation. Angie Anderson, a Platt Park resident and mother of 2 young children, said she’s heard DeGette talk about it.

“I consider myself pretty progressive, and I think that she represents me very well,” said Anderson, who said she has voted for DeGette in every election since she’s lived in Denver.

Ocasio-Cortez even gave DeGette a shout-out for her support of the policy .

“She is one of the most powerful people in Congress on health care,” Ocasio-Cortez said to the crowd of 30,000 people. “And Diana DeGette is a co-sponsor of Medicare for All. She believes in the guaranteed right to health care for every American. Thank you for electing her.”

Anderson said she thinks Kiros and DeGette are actually pretty similar politically.

“I just think the real difference is that Rep. DeGette has many years of experience and is actually a very skilled policymaker and legislator,” she said. “I take issue with the idea that youth and inexperience is fundamentally required to effect change.”

What did assembly win mean?

After Kiros’ assembly win, a wide swath of political observers jumped in to say that while the event’s outcome was surprising, it wasn’t particularly meaningful for the upcoming primary.

Doug Friednash, a former Denver city attorney and chief of staff to then-Gov. John Hickenlooper, wrote in a Post opinion piece recently that assemblies exclude the vast majority of voters, resulting in a “tiny, highly motivated slice of activists” to determine results.

“More and more extreme candidates in both parties have effectively used these caucuses to fly under the radar and effectively organized a small cadre of activists, like the Democratic Socialists, to show up at the caucus, leading to stunning results that make most voters shake their heads in extreme disbelief,” wrote Friednash, now a partner with Denver-based law firm Brownstein, Hyatt, Farber and Schreck.

At the very least, the win showed that Kiros’ team found a way to out-organize DeGette’s team. But it remains to be seen if that will continue through the primary election.

Kiros and her supporters agree that her assembly win doesn’t mean she’s a shoo-in to win the primary.

“I don’t think that folks who talk about the assembly not being reflective of the general electorate are wrong,” Kiros said. But she noted it was unusual for an incumbent to lose an assembly vote.

“DeGette has been challenged before,” Kiros said. “This is a different kind of campaign.”

Mabrey said finding ways to raise money for her campaign will be one of the keys for Kiros in the remaining months before the primary.

“Melat����ap going to need an injection of grassroots campaign cash to keep up,” he said.

Through the end of 2025, she had raised about $204,000 and spent nearly $138,000. DeGette had raised about $729,000 and spent $507,000 through then, while James had raised about $179,000 and spent $86,600.

Despite having lower cash reserves than DeGette, Kiros is getting recognized more often when in public, she said. During a recent hourlong interview with The Post at a Capitol Hill coffee shop, two people stopped by the table to introduce themselves and voice their support for her.

“I’m totally voting for you, dude,” one said. “Your campaign is (expletive) awesome.”

Between now and June, Kiros plans to knock on doors, call voters, work with businesses and use digital advertising to get her message out. Nearly 200 people volunteered at a recent weekend canvassing event, she said.

“The thing that we need to do to win,” she said, “is to give people enough faith that getting involved will make a difference.”

Staff writer Seth Klamann contributed to this story.

“When you take a look at what����ap happening right now in America, it����ap pretty dismal,” said James, a Democrat, in an interview. “And we are lacking leadership in America.”

James’ effort to beat Democratic U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette in the Denver-based 1st Congressional District comes nearly three years after James was elected to CU’s governing board. An early marijuana entrepreneur who opened a cannabis shop in northwest Denver, she sought to frame her primary challenge within larger debates consuming the Democratic Party.

Namely: how to respond to the Trump administration and growing frustration among Democratic voters with the party’s leadership.

“When I look at what����ap happening here in Denver, Denver is a very, very different city. The 1st Congressional District is a different place than it was 30 years ago, even 10 years ago,” she said. That’s a reference to 1996, when DeGette, now 68, was first elected.

James’ congressional campaign is part of seeking to unseat established Democratic politicians in the 2026 midterms. Indeed, James’ comment about the length of DeGette’s tenure echoes what U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s primary opponent said earlier this year: “We are living in a totally different America than the one (Pelosi) knew when she entered politics 45 years ago.”

Alongside James, four other Democrats have filed to challenge DeGette in next year’s primary. They include in their late-20s — Melat Kiros and Carter Hanson — who’ve also noted DeGette’s lengthy tenure in Congress, according to Westword.

James, a 61-year-old Navy veteran who’s also worked as a political strategist, is the only one currently serving in elected office.

James said that if she wins, she will support a “Medicare For All” program, which would ensure health care coverage for all Americans, and an income-based version of to provide free tuition to public four-year universities. She said she will also back policies to boost homeownership in Denver, .

She said she supports immigration reform that would provide a path to citizenship for people brought to the United States as children, along with farmworkers and That plan would include more border security — on immigration policy.

She said her priorities include trying to repair the Democratic Party’s brand, which has for a path forward after President Donald Trump’s election last year. She cast that effort as centered around fighting broadly against Trump policies, including the administration’s mass-deportation agenda.

James, who represents the 1st Congressional District’s residents on CU’s governing board, was the first black woman elected to the panel in decades.

This year, she has faced controversy in that position. She was censured by the board earlier this summer after she was accused of trying to strip funding for a CU campaign that sought to provide information about the risks of high-potency marijuana. One member of the board accused her of putting her own interests as a marijuana business owner over the interests of the university.

James has said the campaign’s materials were racist — they included images of a Black family suffering from a mother’s marijuana use — and she said the censure was about “censorship and retaliation.”

The new wave of challenges against incumbent Democrats has only just lapped the shores of Colorado’s blue strongholds, where two longtime Democratic officials are vying to succeed Gov. Jared Polis next year and U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, who is up for reelection, boasts and faces only newcomer primary challengers so far.

Still, DeGette has parried aggressive primary challenges before in the 1st District, which is now largely contiguous with Denver city boundaries and also includes Glendale and Holly Hills.

Her 2018 Democratic opponent initially raised more money than the congresswoman, sparking early murmurings that DeGette may be vulnerable. But she cruised to a in the primary and has not drawn a substantive Democratic opponent since.

She enters this campaign season with more than $320,000 in the bank, .

Last summer, DeGette defended then-President Joe Biden’s brief determination to stay in the presidential race. In a virtual town hall earlier this summer, she sharply criticized Trump’s policies and the federal tax bill that later blew a hole in Colorado’s budget. She also said she supported ending U.S. funding of offensive weapons for Israel.

In a statement Wednesday, DeGette spokeswoman Jennie Peek-Dunstone said the congresswoman had fought to “stop the harmful cuts to Medicaid, defend reproductive freedom, lower the cost of medicine, and boost breakthrough lifesaving medical research.”

“In these uncertain times when extreme MAGA Republicans control the White House and Congress, we need Congresswoman DeGette’s proven leadership to hold the Trump administration accountable and continue delivering for Denverites,” Peek-Dunstone said.

But James expressed confidence, saying she had the name recognition and fundraising abilities to beat DeGette.

“This is the first time in Diana’s 30-year career that she’s going to be facing a challenger that can bring all of that to the forefront,” she said.

For David Seligman, that focus would be a continuation of what he called his “life’s work.” A Harvard Law grad, Seligman since 2018 has led the Denver-based nonprofit Towards Justice, which has backed litigation and legislation to support ride-hailing app drivers, renters, migrant workers and meatpackers.

“I’ve seen throughout my career that there are two sets of law in this country,” he said in an interview. “There’s one for those with wealth and power, and one for the rest of us. Especially as the Trump administration is dismantling … the parts of the government that are there to protect workers, consumers, small businesses and the environment, it’s critical right now that we make sure those with wealth and power play by the same set of rules as the rest of us.”

Seligman enters an increasingly crowded 2026 Democratic primary field to succeed term-limited Attorney General Phil Weiser. Secretary of State Jena Griswold is an immediate front-runner, but other candidates include Boulder District Attorney Michael Dougherty and former state House Speaker Crisanta Duran.

He said he wants to build upon and expand the work of Weiser, who is running for governor. Weiser has filed or joined lawsuit after lawsuit against the Trump administration since January. Before that, his office had pursued consumer-protection investigations and lawsuits — some of which Seligman’s firm was involved in — against landlords and companies like Wyatt’s Towing.

Seligman said he would continue that work while focusing on medical debt, corporate price gouging and responding to the the federal government’s withdrawal from regulatory oversight.

Against the longstanding political figures in the AG’s race, Seligman — who’s never run for office — stands as a relative unknown among the broader voting public. His early challenge will be elevating his message and finding a constituency in a crowded political environment and in a Democratic Party still searching for a path forward.

Seligman’s charted path will likely be the most liberal of the AG field. He spoke at U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Greeley rally earlier this year, and he joins the race with endorsements from most of the progressive lawmakers in the state Capitol. That includes the state House’s third-ranking Democrat, Rep. Jennifer Bacon, along with former state Democratic Party chairwoman Morgan Carroll.

“Right now, people know that the world feels deeply unfair and deeply scary,” Seligman said. “And I want to fight to be their lawyer to make sure the law is on their side — and not on the side of billionaires and corrupt politicians.”

It continues to alarm me that opponents of the Worker Protection Act  (that would overturn the Labor Peace Act) use the union shop argument as a false defense of workers’ rights. Compelling union membership vs. open shop contracts is an important discussion, but the existing Colorado Labor Peace Act is designed to stop union organizing and nothing more.  They are fully aware of this because they are the same people who oppose open-shop unions as well.

The Labor Peace Act curtails freedom of association for thousands of people who want to improve their lives. It is not just about money. The right to organize is about public safety, work schedules and appeal rights. In short, it is about due process of law. People who truly believe in freedom of speech and association could modify this bill to mandate strong open-shop contacts, but they choose to label anything they disagree with as extreme or overregulation — especially labor law, considered by many as “anti-business” which is a death knell that has helped turn the two-party system into a smoldering mess.

Looking at the big picture, I think the fedearl DOGE and the Colorado Labor Peace Act resemble a perfect recipe for escalating class warfare. Colorado is a blue state. I hope Gov. Jared Polis listens to Sen. Bernie Sanders on this one (but not on everything).

Tim Allport, Arvada

Please stop the whining

That ubiquitous sound coming to your neighborhood soon is not from beautiful songbirds or children’s distant voices on the playground. No, it����ap the piercing whine of the annoying gas leaf blower.

Their use, especially by lawn service companies, seems to be growing by the yard. Is it really necessary to move every grass clipping and every dry leaf off your hardscapes? This noise pollution interrupts our relaxing moments, cozy chats and the peace we all deserve.

The noise level of a gas leaf blower with its two-stroke engine can reach up to 100 decibels. So, if you have to blow, choose battery-powered over gas-powered. Or just get out the broom!

T. Allen, Littleton

Medical debt should remain off credit reports

Re: “Lawmakers urged to increase consumer protection,” March 20 news story

The former general counsel for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) recently briefed Colorado’s Judiciary committees.

One CFPB action that our congressional delegation should work to protect is the rule that prohibits credit reporting companies like Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian from sharing medical debt information with lenders, which then gets used in calculating credit scores.

Medical debt is not like other kinds of consumer debt and should be treated differently.

Often medical debt is unavoidable — people get sick and suddenly face large medical bills, which can take months to pay off. However, if they can’t pay it off within 90 days of receiving the medical bill, their credit score gets dinged.

Even worse, medical bills sometimes have errors, which take time to fight. Complaints from people about debt collection attempts on medical bills that were not owed . People shouldn’t feel pressured to pay a bill they don’t owe just to protect their credit score.

Under the CFPB rule, people still owe legitimate medical bills. But that debt would not factor into their credit reports.

This is something the Colorado legislature has also tackled in a bipartisan fashion. Our federal representatives should protect the medical debt rule. Let’s let families recovering from health issues get back on their feet medically as well as financially.

Danny Katz, Denver

Editor’s note: Katz is executive Director at CoPIRG.

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Re: “It’s about ideology, not oligarchy,” March 30 commentary

Ross Douthat states that the misuse of “oligarchy” by Sen. Bernie Sanders creates a vision of Trumpism as a vision of billionaires calling the shots. He correctly notes that many Trump agenda items are not those of the oligarchs.

What he ignores is that any coherent “ideology” of Donald Trump is contained in Project 2025, which is his model for assuming power.

Project 2025 is explicitly derived from the processes used by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to subvert his country’s democracy and by Russian leader Vladimir Putin to subvert the inchoate democratic movement after the fall of the Soviet Union. The oligarchs in Hungary and Russia support the dictatorship with their monetary gains in return for being allowed to remain billionaires. The dictator calls the shots.

According to former Secretary of Labor , seven oligarchs contributed a total of $1 billion to elect Trump and other Republicans. Elon Musk contributed millions to the key Wisconsin Supreme Court election. Musk, Jeff Bezos, Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg support Trump on their mega-platforms.

Again, according to Reich, Trump supporters add to his riches through his . Douthat is right, except that the “ideology” of Trumpism should be called “kleptocracy.”

David Schroeder, Arvada

America is worth staying and fighting for

Re: ” ‘I don’t get why anyone would want to stay,’ ” March 9 news story

First, there was the article “I don’t understand why anyone would want to stay” about moving out of the U.S. because of the country’s political direction.

Then, there were the follow-up letters concerning the moves abroad – other countries are also having their problems, etc.

What amazes and distresses me is that I have seen no letters stating my instant, gut reaction when I read the “don’t understand why anyone would want to stay” article:

Because America is worth fighting for – for our future and the future country in which our grandchildren will live.

America has been a beacon of light to the world. That light is dimming. We need to stay and get that light shining again.

I never saw this country as a nation of quitters.

Alvina Mabry, Golden

The playbook to promote division

In what may be the lowest of lows in spreading inflammatory disinformation, Rep. Lauren Boebert, CD-4, issued a on April 1 in which she asserted that “Members of the Democrat [sic] Party have made calls for their supporters to incite and engage in domestic terrorism by attacking Tesla vehicles and facilities to protest Elon Musk.” This is utterly defamatory and beyond the bounds of civil political discourse, but it fits with the playbook of the Trump administration and Rep. Boebert’s efforts to create a false narrative promoting division and hostility within our society for their own political ends.

Ralph Roberts, Littleton

Journalist rightfully honored

I wish to offer my sincere congratulations to Sam Tabachnik for the honor of Journalist of the Year, Denver Post reporter, selected by the Colorado Society of Professional Journalists. He is an excellent researcher and writer. You must be very proud to have him on your staff. I anticipate reading his important articles in the Denver Post.

Victoria Swearingen, Denver

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Budget-writing lawmakers have spent the past several months finding more than $1 billion in cuts as they grapple with balancing the budget under the growth cap set by the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. The chair of the Joint Budget Committee, Sen. Jeff Bridges, characterized it as “a budget that everyone will be upset by and that everyone can be proud of” — foreshadowing what’s expected to be a lengthy debate about state priorities.

The Senate debate will be the first step toward the bill’s passage. It will then go to a full debate in the House, likely next week.

The budget for the 2025-26 fiscal year, which starts July 1, is one of the few must-pass bills every legislative session. Lawmakers budgeted to about $16.9 billion in general fund spending, which is the more flexible pot of money for state priorities. Overall spending would be $43.9 billion.

Here’s what else is happening in the legislature this week:

Single-payer health care analysis

Colorado’s latest push toward a single-payer health care system will be in the House Finance Committee on Monday afternoon. , if passed, would require to analyze model legislation creating a universal health care system in the state. The analysis would be paid for using gifts, grants and donations to the university.

The legislation already passed the Senate on a nearly party-line vote. Sen. Cleave Simpson, an Alamosa Republican, voted yes on the measure — in the hopes, he said, that it would finally silence the debate about whether Colorado should move toward such a system for health insurance.

Single-payer health care has otherwise been a priority for some Democrats and liberals for years and was a centerpiece of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns. A similar bill died in the final hours of last year’s legislative session.

In 2016, Colorado voters rejected a universal health care proposal.

Age verification for websites

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is looking to regulate access to certain websites with a pair of bills slated for debate Tuesday.

The full Senate will discuss , which to access websites with porn and sexual materials. The proposal aims to protect minors, according to the legislative declaration.

Also that day, the House Health and Human Services Committee will debate , which aims to regulate social media use by youth. It would require platforms to determine if the users are children and provide extra tools so they can curate their experience on the platform. It follows a similar effort last year that failed in the final week of the session.

Committee hearings are the chance for public testimony on bills. The exact timing of the hearings and floor debates is fluid and can change.

“We will not allow America to become an oligarchy,” Sanders said to cheers. “This nation was built by working people, and we are not going to let a handful of billionaires run the government.”

Sanders, speaking alongside U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, visited the city as part of a tour the pair are taking across the country  to garner early support for Democrats before the midterm elections in 2026.

“An extreme concentration of power and corruption is taking over this country like never before,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “A better world is possible.”

Ocasio-Cortez, who said the crowd was estimated to be 30,000 people, praised each of Colorado’s Democratic members of Congress while addressing the park.

“We need a Democratic Party that fights harder for us, too. That means communities choosing and voting for Democrats and elected officials who know how to stand for the working class,” she said. “Colorado, I want to thank you for working hard to make that happen.”

She also took the opportunity to call out Republican Rep. Gabe Evans, who narrowly defeated Democrat Yadira Caraveo in the November election to represent Colorado’s 8th Congressional District.

Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders have focused their visits on areas represented by Republicans but that have close enough margins to possibly swing toward Democrats in the future. Earlier in the day, the pair visited Evans’ district, for a rally in Greeley.

The district is likely to be a major fight as Democrats seek to regain footing in Congress. About 11,000 people attended the event, according to

In a news release Friday, Evans criticized Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez for their policies, including their lack of support for the oil and gas industry.

“Congressman Evans is fighting for lower costs, safer communities and making the American Dream possible for all Coloradans. His common-sense approach stands in stark contrast to AOC and Bernie Sanders’ extreme anti-oil-and-gas rhetoric,” according to the statement.

Bernie, who visited the same Denver park in 2019 when he was competing for the Democratic nomination for president, won that contest in Colorado in 2020 and 2016.

During Friday’s rally, he repeated themes he has long elevated around health care reform, support for Social Security and the power held by the wealthiest Americans.

“What I think is the worst addiction in this country, the most dangerous, is the greed of the oligarchs,” he said. “How much money do you need?”

Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez have visited several cities including Las Vegas and Omaha and will next go to Tucson.

Other speakers in Denver included union leaders and the former commissioner for the Federal Trade Commission, Alvaro Bedoya. President Donald Trump recently fired Bedoya from that position.

People watched from the rooftops of nearby buildings, the stairs of the Denver City and County building and outside of the gated perimeter of the official event. The rally remained peaceful, with crowd members occasionally chanting and shouting in agreement with the speakers. At various times, the crowd chanted Sanders’ and Ocasio-Cortez’s names and phrases such as “tax the rich.”

The speakers and crowd expressed frustrations not only with GOP members of Congress but also with Democrats. The crowd erupted in cheers when Jimmy Williams, general president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, said he had a message for the Democratic Party: “Get off your ass.”

The democratic socialist senator, who has been in Congress for nearly 35 years, as one of a few planned “town meetings.” He said people in the country are “profoundly disgusted with what is going on here in Washington, D.C.”

Sanders, 83, targeted Elon Musk — the tech mogul who is working hand in hand with President Donald Trump to reduce the size of the federal government, to the alarm of many Democrats — as one of a number of billionaires now “running the government” under Trump and threatening to turn it into an oligarchy.

Sanders, who has run for president twice, has been attracting relatively large crowds on the tour, . Nine thousand people showed up for one of his stops in suburban Detroit earlier this month, while 4,000 came to see him in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

The doors will open for the Civic Center Park event at 101 W. 14th Ave. at 4 p.m. Friday, and the speaking program will begin at 5 p.m. Those wishing to attend are asked to .

“This is a tough hill to climb, but if Trisha has a solid get-out-the-vote campaign, and the top of the ticket performs well, she has a good shot at this,” said Markey, who represented the 4th District from for a single term, from 2009 to 2011.

Trisha is Trisha Calvarese, a 37-year-old labor activist and speechwriter from Highlands Ranch who has helped run political campaigns in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. She won the Democratic nomination for the 4th Congressional District in Tuesday’s primary and will face off against U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, who easily outpaced five other Republicans to clinch the GOP line on the Nov. 5 ballot.

Even facing Boebert, who switched districts but didn’t leave behind years of controversy that have made her a media fixture during three-plus years in office, political observers say Calvarese faces daunting odds at the ballot box. The fewer than 100,000 registered Democrats, while Republican affiliations have topped 200,000.

“I don’t see the scenario where Trisha Calvarese can break through in this election cycle, against a candidate with that kind of name recognition,” said Ken Bickers, a political science professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. “Republicans are so energized about the presidential contest this time around that that’s going to carry several Republican candidates, including Lauren Boebert.”

Party identification and name recognition reign supreme in congressional elections, he said, with “everything else being in the noise.” With such a heavily Republican-leaning district in play and Boebert practically a household name in Colorado, Bickers said, Calvarese will need to pull a rabbit from her political hat to prevail.

But Markey sees a path to victory for Calvarese. Their races share a key dynamic: Markey, too, took on a polarizing Republican back in 2008, when she defeated three-term U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave by a head-turning 12 percentage points, upending assumptions.

“Trisha needs to be visible in all parts of the district and demonstrate her commitment to rural Colorado,” said Markey, who was from Fort Collins. “Unlike Boebert, she has roots in the district.”

Boebert, who’s also 37, moved to the district earlier this year after deciding to forgo a challenging reelection bid in the largely Western Slope-based 3rd Congressional District, the more narrowly favorable GOP-leaning district she’s represented since January 2021. She entered the 4th District race in December, weeks after former congressman Ken Buck, a Republican, decided he wouldn’t run for a sixth term.

Highlands Ranch High grad

But Calvarese, who won a three-way primary race, is hoping to seize on misgivings about Boebert in the coming months.

She needs money and exposure. She had a fraction of the cash on hand that Boebert had for the campaign a few weeks ago — — but hoped her nomination would begin to attract national money.

“We have a beautiful ad that we’d like to get on TV,” she said. “I’m going to call on (Boebert) to debate — constantly.”

Calvarese spent a few early years in Sterling, where her father was the city attorney, before her family settled in Highlands Ranch. She graduated from Highlands Ranch High School. While she calls herself a “product of the district” she is running to represent, she has spent much of her adult life in Washington, D.C.

She returned to Colorado last fall to care for her ailing parents, both of whom have since died.

Calvarese first worked as a press intern for independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and then wrote speeches for the U.S. National Science Foundation. There, she said she played a major role in crafting the messaging around the CHIPS and Science Act .

The $280 billion bill is designed to boost American semiconductor manufacturing. Earlier this year, the Biden administration said it would provide $90 million from the law to improve a microchip plant in Colorado Springs.

“We’re in a global competition for talent and technology,” Calvarese said. “We’re in a new Sputnik moment — make no doubt about it.”

Calvarese also was a senior writer for Conservation International, a global environmental organization. Her approach to preserving nature, she said, is to never forget the people in the middle of it all — a position that dovetails with her involvement in labor advocacy and work as a speechwriter at the AFL-CIO.

“We’re not going to leave our fossil-fuel communities behind,” she said. “It’s (about) making sure it’s not being done off the backs of the working people.”

The 4th Congressional District encompasses a large portion of Weld County, which easily contains Colorado’s most productive oil and gas field. That’s an industry that Boebert wants to “unleash” on to the world market, said her campaign manager, Drew Sexton, who responded to questions on Boebert’s behalf.

“Voters of all backgrounds want Congress to secure our southern border, unleash American energy dominance, stop the reckless spending that has driven inflation to record highs, protect our ranchers and farmers from radical environmentalists, and provide our veterans with the support and benefits they have earned,” he wrote in an email.

Sexton, who did not mention Calvarese by name, promised that Boebert would “campaign relentlessly across every corner of the district.”

Running in a new district, the two-term congresswoman in a GOP primary field of six candidates, as of Thursday evening, including in the district’s population center of Douglas County. Her closest competitor was Logan County Commissioner Jerry Sonnenberg, who garnered little more than 14% of the vote.

In the Democratic primary, Calvarese won 45% of votes, while Ike McCorkle — who ran against Buck in the last two elections — had 41% and John Padora Jr. received nearly 14%.

A sign in special election blowout?

Even as the 4th District’s boundaries have shifted with redistricting, its baseline has been clear in Republican presidential nominees’ vote shares. Data show former President George W. Bush, Mitt Romney and former President Donald Trump each notched between 56% and 58% in the 4th over the last 20 years.

The exception was in 2008, when Barack Obama made it close, coming within a percentage point of Republican John McCain there. It was a banner year for Democrats, when America elected its first Black president in a wave that helped propel Markey to victory.

In the 4th District’s 2020 and 2022 elections, Buck by roughly 24 percentage points each time.

This year, an early test of Calvarese’s mettle came Tuesday, when she decisively lost to Republican Greg Lopez — by nearly 24 points — in a head-to-head special election to fill Buck’s seat for the rest of this term. Buck resigned his seat in late March, saying he could no longer tolerate the dysfunction in Congress.

Lopez, a mayor of Parker in the 1990s, will represent the district only until January, when it’s likely that either Boebert or Calvarese is sworn in for a two-year term. The ballot also may include Hannah Goodman, whom Libertarians nominated earlier this year, and other potential third-party and independent candidates.

Andy Boian, a Denver-based Democratic political strategist, said Calvarese’s loss in the special election wasn’t a good sign for a Democratic contender in such a red district. Luring unaffiliated voters, who make up the largest bloc of the district’s electorate, is “the only way Calvarese makes this a real race.”

But he isn’t hopeful.

“I’ve learned over 35 years in politics to never say never, not ever,” Boian said, but he’s skeptical Boebert is vulnerable in the 4th. “If I were a betting man, odds favor the congresswoman by a wide margin. Some sort of significant backlash to the MAGA right is really the only way Calvarese makes it in.”

And much has changed in the 4th District since Markey broke through there 16 years ago. Fort Collins is no longer part of the district, while all of Douglas County south of Denver has been added. Also, 2024 is not 2008.

“I think the 2024 presidential election is going to look a lot different,” Bickers said, underscoring the boost Trump is likely to give the ticket as the GOP presidential nominee. “Boebert has the vocal support of a presidential candidate who is going to be very popular in that district.”

But Calvarese still sees Markey’s disruptive, if short-lived, presence in the district as indicative of what’s possible in November.

“Lauren Boebert is beatable as long as we are laser-focused,” she said. “I think I can be the next Betsy Markey.”

WASHINGTON — Facing heat over its military support for Israel’s war, the Biden administration is due to deliver a first-of-its-kind formal verdict this week on whether the have violated international and U.S. laws designed to spare civilians from the worst horrors of war.

A decision against close ally Israel would add to to curb the flow of weapons and money to Israel’s military. The Democratic administration took one of the , when it paused a shipment of 3,500 bombs out of concern over Israel’s threatened offensive on Rafah, a southern city crowded with more than a million Palestinians, a senior administration official said.

The administration at the insistence of Democrats in Congress to a negotiated agreement mandating it look at whether Israeli forces in Gaza have used U.S.-provided weapons and other military assistance in a lawful manner.

Additionally, , it must tell Congress whether it deems that Israel has acted to “arbitrarily deny, restrict, or otherwise impede, directly or indirectly,” delivery of any U.S.-supported humanitarian aid into Gaza for starving civilians there.

The deadline for the U.S. judgement is Wednesday, although State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters Tuesday “it����ap possible it slips just a little bit.”

The administration is compelled to make a decision when tumult in internationally brokered cease-fire negotiations and a threatened Israeli offensive on the crowded southern Gaza city of Rafah — a move adamantly opposed by the U.S. — could change both the course of Israel’s war and Americans’ support for it.

Israel’s campaign to crush the Hamas militant group following and the disaster that����ap followed for Gaza’s civilians also have fueled debate within the Biden administration and Congress over broader questions: Should the U.S. act on grave human rights violations by one of its foreign recipients of military support when it sees them, as advocates say U.S. law requires? Or only when it deems doing so serves U.S. strategic interests?

Democratic and Republican lawmakers openly frame the current decision in those terms.

“While human rights is an important component of the national interest, American priorities are much broader — particularly in an era of strategic competition,” Sen. Jim Risch, the ranking GOP member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Rep. Michael McCaul, Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote last week in urging to Biden to repeal his February directive, formally known as National Security Memorandum 20.

But Sen. Chris Van Hollen, the Democrat who spearheaded congressional negotiations with the White House to mandate the review, told reporters he feared the longstanding desire of American administrations to maintain the strong security partnership with Israel would shape the outcome.

Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. security assistance. Palestinian suffering in the war in Gaza and other challenges for Biden at home and abroad as he seeks reelection against former President Donald Trump, a Republican.

The administration’s findings must be “seen to be based on facts and law, and not based on what they would wish it would be,” Van Hollen told reporters last week.

At the time the White House agreed to the review, it was working to head off moves from the Democratic lawmakers and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders to start restricting shipments of weapons to Israel.

Israel launched its offensive after attacks led by Hamas killed about 1,200 people on Oct. 7. Nearly 35,000 Palestinian civilians, two-thirds of them women and children, have been killed since then, according to local health officials. U.S. and U.N. officials say full-fledged famine has set in in northern Gaza, owing to Israeli restrictions on food shipments and to the fighting.

Human rights groups long have accused Israeli security forces of committing abuses against Palestinians and have accused Israeli leaders of failing to hold those responsible to account.

Israel says that it is following all U.S. and international law, that it investigates allegations of abuse by its security forces and that its campaign in Gaza is proportional to the existential threat it says is posed by Hamas.

As the suffering of Palestinian civilians grew, Biden and his administration edged away from their initial unwavering public support of Israel and began to criticize its conduct of the war.

Biden in December said “indiscriminate bombing” was costing Israel international backing. After from the World Central Kitchen in April, the Biden administration for the first time signaled it might cut military aid to Israel if it didn’t change its handling of the war and humanitarian aid.

Republican Ronald Reagan was one of the last presidents openly to suspend some U.S. support for Israel’s military as a way to pressure Israel over its offensives.

But critics say Biden and other recent presidents have looked the other way when Israel’s security forces are accused of extrajudicial killings and other abuses against Palestinians. They have accepted Israeli assurances over alleged grave abuses that would trigger suspension of military aid for any other foreign military partner, two former State Department officials who left the government last year said. The administration denies any double standard.

Now, though, Congress is compelling the administration to render its most public assessment in decades over whether Israel has used U.S. military support lawfully.

Under a 1997 congressional act known as the Leahy Laws, when the U.S. finds credible evidence that a unit of foreign security forces has committed gross human rights abuses, any U.S. aid to that unit is supposed to be automatically suspended.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote House Speaker Mike Johnson last week that the U.S. found the evidence of such abuses by one particular Israeli unit to be credible. Blinken added that Israel had yet to rectify the unit����ap wrongdoing, something the Leahy laws say must happen for any suspension of military aid to be lifted. Blinken said rather than suspend the aid, the U.S. would work with Israel to “engage on identifying a path to effective remediation for this unit.”

Israeli officials have identified it as the Netzah Yehuda, which is accused in the death of a Palestinian American man and other abuses in the Israeli-occupied West Bank before the war in Gaza erupted.

Tim Rieser, a veteran Senate foreign policy staffer who helped now-retired Sen. Patrick Leahy craft the law, said if it had been applied to Israel, “maybe it would have been a deterrent.”

Instead, “what we’ve seen is that abuses against Palestinians are rarely punished,” Rieser told the AP.

While a finding against Israel under the national security memo wouldn’t obligate the administration to start cutting military support for Israel, it would increase pressure on Biden to do so.

A report to the administration by an unofficial, self-formed panel of military experts and former State Department officials, including Josh Paul and Charles Blaha, points to specific Israeli strikes on aid convoys, journalists, hospitals, schools and refugee centers and other targets broadly protected by law. The report argues the administration must find Israel’s conduct in Gaza has violated the law. Amnesty International has argued the same.

The high civilian death tolls in Israel’s strikes go far beyond the laws of proportionality, the U.S. critics and rights groups say. They point to an Oct. 31 strike on a six-story apartment building in Gaza that killed at least 106 civilians. Critics say Israel provided no immediate justification for that strike.

“They’re taking what we did in Mosul and Raqqa, and going tenfold beyond,” exceeding even what was allowed under U.S. rules of engagement at the time in the so-called war on terror, said Wes Bryant, a former Air Force targeting expert who led strike cells against the Islamic State and other extremist groups in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. He is among those urging the U.S. to condition military support to Israel.

“If this is the new bar for 21st-century warfare, we might as well go back to World War II,” Bryant said.

Israel and the Biden administration say Hamas’ presence in tunnels throughout Gaza, and alleged presence in hospitals and other protected sites, make it harder for Israeli forces to avoid high civilian casualties.

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